Project Execution Planning for Building Information Modeling

A buildingSMART Alliance Research Project

Interview Questions - Design and Engineering

State your name and position in the firm.
What is your title and what are your responsibilities in this company?
What is your firm yearly revenue? How many employees do you have?
Have you already implemented BIM? Y/N
How many years of experience do you (personally) have with BIM?
How many years of experience does your company have with BIM?
Were you involved in the decision-making stage when your company chose to implement BIM? What led to BIM? Why BIM?
Who do you think should be the primary driver in the BIM implementation?
What aspects of BIM is your company currently implementing? How did you choose these aspects of BIM?
What BIM software do you use? Why did you choose this software?

What benefits are coming out of using BIM on the projects that you are performing?
How do you assess the production benefits of BIM?
What is the impact of BIM on design/engineering (cost, time, overall project delivery time, quality)?
What are critical factors in successful implementation of BIM?
What issues and concerns are you encountering on projects that incorporate BIM in design? What do you think are the risks emerging with BIM implementation?
How much did it cost your company to get started with BIM? Have you tracked your return on investment?
Have you encountered problems with the legal liabilities associated with implementing BIM? If so, how did you address them?
Have you used any new contractual and organizational arrangements? If so, what types and were they successful?
Have you encountered concerns regarding model ownership?
Who typically authors the model?
Who uses the model?
Who is responsible for the information in the model?
Who stores the model?
Who has copyright to the model content?
What is your experience regarding defining the level of detail that is valuable to have in the design model?
What is your current workflow process?
How do you deal with the interoperability issues that arise?

How did your company make the transition in adopting BIM practices? Did it have a significant impact on your typical design process?
Do you have a detailed development plan for making change to BIM?
What type of BIM training do you use?
Has the composition of your design staff changed? Are there any new roles that arose with this technology?
How do you get all parties of a design project to agree on new methods of working?
Have you or your company ever been involved in the development of a BIM Execution Plan on a project? Define BIM Execution Plan: e.g. company plan vs. project plan.
Yes – Who was involved? What decisions were made? What process did you use to develop the plan? Can we get a copy?
No – Are you planning to? Who should be involved; make decisions?

What projects have you executed with BIM so far?
List each project and the BIM activity implemented.
Also list if the benefits outweigh the cost on each project – further investigation will be done at another time.
Do you feel any would be particularly valuable for us to evaluate in more detail? Why?

What are the future trends? Where do you think BIM will go?
What is the current trend within your company toward performing more projects with BIM?

Do you have any additional comments or items that you feel are important to consider?
Can you refer us to other BIM experts or firms/companies we can interview?